Choose Adventure

My friend Sarah is on a mission to show us simple ways to add more adventure into our everyday lives. She created the cutest “Adventure Generator” download to help us get creative with the concept of adventure. Here is how I was inspired.

You really don’t have to talk me into adventures. Greg & I love to get out and experience this big beautiful world as often as we can, so I already knew I was going to be super into Sarah’s “Adventure Generator”. My favorite part is that it makes you think outside the box and I heart creative problem solving.

Adventure Time!

For example, my pal Kris chose “Photograph a Hidden Park”. The poor thing has been tormented by never-ending snowfall all winter so she did her best. That park is hidden, alright.

withakwriting.com

And our friend Cara really took “Try a New Food” to another level when she devised a treasure hunt and involved her little ones in a quest to find a golden tin of cookies. So clever!

When Blanca’s generator told her to “Draw a New Recipe” she had to get very creative & came up with a “recipe for life”. Brilliant!

colorfulblanca.com

For my adventure, the generator chose “Paint a Small Road”. I was completely stumped. I thought I might paint a picture of the road to our favorite picnic spot. It really isn’t small so I was hoping that it would be okay to fudge the details a bit. I was preparing to start when I remembered a painting I had started a few months back but never finished, a picture of our favorite San Francisco pub.

O’Reilly’s was an authentically Irish pub, and it was our go-to place whenever we were in the city. They served a great shepherd’s pie and poured Guinness, so really what else do you need? The outdoor tables afforded some awesome people watching. And, it was on Beach Blanket Babylon Blvd (technically Green Street; this block was renamed in honor of the long-running play of the same name). Only one block long, and you can’t get much smaller than that.

I mean it looks ok in this picture

I dug the uncompleted painting out, intent on finishing it, but it just looked bad. Really bad. It needed a lot of work. Unfortunately, trying to fix it up, I ruined it completely. Every adventure hits a little rough patch, doesn’t it? Onto Plan B.

Since I had been playing with image transfer onto canvas panels this week, I wondered if I couldn’t do something like that, a hybrid transfer/painting. So I messed around with the photographs I have and came up with this.

Picture hybrid

Rub off the paper

Ready to paint

Using the transfer technique from my book, Handmade Gifts That Don’t Suck (and also featured here on my blog), it turned out so well I almost didn’t want to paint it, but rules is rules.

Paint a Small Road

So here it is, my ‘painting’ of a small road as seen from the chairs outside O’Reilly’s Public House. Sadly, after 20 years on Green St. (I mean Beach Blanket Babylon Blvd.) O’Reilly’s went dark May 2014, and has not reopened. But I’ll always have fond memories, and now I’ll always have this adventure, and a pretty cool painting too.

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